About the Video Clip

Ben Chifley’s Pipe is an episode from the series The Prime Ministers’ National Treasures, produced in 2007.

The Prime Ministers’ National TreasuresAward winning cartoonist and yarn spinner, Warren Brown, reveals the emotional lives of Australian Prime Ministers through 10 objects they used every day or even adored – from Robert Menzies’ home movie camera, to Joseph Lyons’ love letters, Harold Holt’s briefcase and Ben Chifley’s pipe. These treasures reveal the nation’s leaders, as you have never seen them before.

The Prime Ministers’ National Treasures is a Film Australia National Interest Program produced in association with Old Parliament House and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Curriculum Focus

Students write extended or sustained texts that entertain, move, inform and persuade in print and electronic mediums. They write imaginative texts that contain personal, social and cultural ideas and issues related to their own lives and communities and their views of their expanding world. The imaginative texts they write may include short stories, anecdotes, plays, poetry, personal letters and advertisements. They also write information or argument texts which deal with ideas and issues where they would like to effect change, to persuade a general or particular audience to change their point of view, and/or to take action. The information and argument texts they write may include biographies, advertisements, news articles, features, letters to the editor and reviews.

Background Information

One of the most highly regarded of Australia’s Prime Ministers, Ben Chifley was a former train driver with a voice like worn out boot leather. He was well aware that his image as the typical bloke next door—he was rarely seen without his tobacco pipe—helped to sell an ambitious raft of post-war reconstruction projects to the Australian public. He was also a gifted treasurer, prone to personal and professional thrift, which allowed him to set the stage for Australia’s economic boom in the 1950s.

Chifley became Prime Minister after the death of John Curtin. The war ended soon after, and the great challenge was now changing to a peacetime economy that would create jobs for the returning troops, house the new families they would start, stimulate trade and development, and increase social welfare.

The economy was so active that not only were houses built and jobs found for the 10,000 men who were returning each week, but a massive immigration program was started. Many of the migrants worked on the new Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electricity scheme, with its promise of opening up new areas to irrigated agriculture.

One of the Chifley Government’s main challenges was the threat that inflation would soar in such an economic boom time, as demand outstripped supply. Chifley countered this by maintaining some of the price controls and rationing that had been imposed during the war. He also wanted to give the Commonwealth more power to control the economy, and proposed to do this by taking over the banking system. His attempt to change the Constitution to allow this was defeated in a referendum.

Mistrust over Chifley’s economic policies, plus resentment at continued rationing and controls, led to his defeat in the 1949 election.

Ben Chifley (1885-1951) was Prime Minister of Australia from July 1945 to December 1949. Ben Chifley’s pipe is held at the Ben Chifley Home in Bathurst NSW.

Classroom Activities

1.Writing a biography
One form of communication about a Prime Minister can be through a biography. A biography of a Prime Minister should tell us about:

The person’s background

His life before politics — and how that shaped his later life

Why the person entered politics

How the person became Prime Minister

What the person achieved, and failed to achieve, as Prime Minister

The influence of others on him in the role

His life after the Prime Ministership

An assessment or evaluation of the impact of the role on him, and his impact on the nation.

You should research these aspects, and then use the object as a way of focusing on or introducing your biographical story to your readers.
Your presentation can be as:

A journalistic article

An imaginary memoir

A formal biographical article

A PowerPoint-supported oral presentation

A debate (e.g. that Prime Minister X contributed more to Australia than Prime Minister Y)

Or some other format.

2.Storyboard a play

Once you have researched the biographical details think about how you might present this as a film or play.

Develop a storyboard that shows the key stages of the film or play, with a sketch and written explanation of each stage.

Will your play be a broad sweep, or will it focus on a particular key moment? Will it focus on the political or the personal? Will it try to show Chifley as an historical figure, or as someone who is still relevant today?

You might then look at a copy of a recent play on Chifley, A Local Man, written by Bob Ellis and Robin McLachlan.